Book vs Movie

It is a well-known facts that there exist many movies that don't measure up to books they were based on. 

My default thinking tends to be: "Oh, a book! I am going to read it! Then, it's going to be so much fun to watch the movie!"

I don't think this paradigm is working all that well for me.

All too often, after reading and loving a book, the movie is... just not quite as good (or not good at all, or good but half the stuff I loved got cut out, or the way the characters are portrayed clashes with how I saw them in my head while reading the book, or the story was changed). The movie just becomes kind of.... disappointing.

Examples: Dune (thinking of David Lynch's 1984 version), Harry Potter series, Pride and Prejudice.

There were a few exceptions where I didn't particularly enjoy the book but the movie was fun to watch.

Examples: The Hunger Games series, Bourne Identity, Everything is Illuminated (thank you, Mr. Schreiber, for directing it and making it so real. Also, Russian is actually spoken by native Russians! Awesome!)

And then, there are books one discovers after watching (and loving) the movie. Terrifying thought - there are probably some books I would have never read if I hadn't seen the movies and wanted MORE.

When I was a kid (back in the USSR), I saw Jules Verne's "Children of Captain Grant" and I became completely obsessed with it. When I learned there was a book (I remember my mom saying something along the lines that reading a book is even more interesting than watching a movie) - it was like a promise of something so amazing - like a giant present waiting to be opened. As I child, I LOVED the book. Sadly, I tried reading it as a grown-up, and... nope. 

Also, "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" - seeing the movies first helped visualize the characters and made getting through the books easier.

During Perestroika, some of the previously banned or "disappeared" stuff started coming back. Right around 1990, there was a "Week of Tarkovskiy" (Russian-born film director with a very distinct visual style, sort of like a Soviet version of Kubrik) - where every night that week, a different Tarkovskiy film was broadcasted on TV. The only one I saw was "Stalker" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuOnfQd-aTw). I can't describe the impact that movie had on me. I have never seen anything like that before. I was about 12 years old, and nothing I have ever experienced could compare... It became the Paragon of Science Fiction. I pestered my mother with questions - why? what does it mean? I don't get it... but why and WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN? She happened to mention that, years ago, she read the book (Roadside Picnic by Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskie). A book??? There was a book?  

I spent years looking for Roadside Picnic. It wasn't in any of the (small-town, middle-of-nowhere) libraries. It wasn't at the bookstores. I couldn't find it anywhere - no one in the family had it even though many of the adults seemed to have read it.

In the late 90's, in Seattle, I was browsing through the Russian section of the university library and I stumbled on a new edition of the Strugatskie's works in multiple volumes. Roadside Picnic was there. It was everything I expected it to be and then some.

More recently, there have been "Blade Runner,"  "Let the Right One In," "The Man in the High Castle," and "The Expanse", where watching the movies and shows lead me to the books. 

Do you have favorite books that were made into movies that you thought were amazing? Do you have favorite movies that made you go out and get the books?